You are correct. The Asterisk system with the beagleboard certainly could replace the existing controller you already have up there. And it would do a very good job. However, if you feel more comfortable leaving it there, then by all means attach the Asterisk system to the second (link) port on the controller. The Asterisk system will work quite well in either configuration. JIM WB6NIL
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2011 13:00:29 -0800 From: phil.n6tct@gmail.com To: app_rpt-users@ohnosec.org Subject: [App_rpt-users] Mountaintop Beagleboard/app_rpt application, your thoughts appreciated
Would love the lists'' thoughts on the following.
I'm with the Black Rock Amateur Radio Association. We currently have a solar/battery-powered UHF repeater with phone patch up on a mountaintop overlooking the Black Rock desert in Nevada. The system has a 5 GHz digit 802.11 link via a Ubiquiti NS-5 wifi radio to the town of Gerlach, about 14 miles south. The existing repeater controller is a Zetron Model 30 with phone patch. The phone patch connects to a VOIP analog telephony adapter, which sends SIP over the 5 GHz digital link down to an asterisk machine in Gerlach and thence to the rest of the world. An IRLP node radio in Gerlach connects to the UHF repeater via UHF just like any repeater user would.
My thought for upgrading the system this spring is to replace the Zetron and VOIP box on the mountaintop with a dual-port repeater controller and a Beagleboard running asterisk. One port on the repeater controller would go the UHF radios, per usual, the other port goes to the Beagleboard (via either a USB URI or Lox board). Asterisk on the Beagleboard would talk IAX over the digital link to the Asterisk system in Gerlach. The IRLP node in Gerlach would also be connected directly to the Asterisk system for improved audio. And of course, the proposed system could also get us onto Echolink and Allstar.
I realize that I could probably eliminate the dual-port repeater controller and just use app_rpt directly, but that removes some redundancy from the system: with both the dual-port controller and the beagleboard, if the beagleboard fails for some reason we still have a working repeater... and I've done enough 8-hour truck rolls from the bay area out to the Black Rock that I've come to appreciate having some amount of fault tolerance. :-)
Very interested in any thoughts folks have around this. Thanks!
Phil, N6TCT President, Black Rock Amateur Radio Association -- http://cq-blackrock.org _______________________________________________ App_rpt-users mailing list App_rpt-users@ohnosec.org http://ohnosec.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users